Acclaimed upon its initial American release, Black Poets of the United Statescontinued to spark comment and analysis for years afterward. Jean Wagner's masterpiece delves into the vital union of racial and religious feeling in the Black poets who emerged from 1890 to 1940. 

Beginning with an analysis of slavery's impact on the Black psyche and religious feeling, Wagner examines the evolution of Black lyrical expression to the end of the nineteenth century. He then moves into a focused study of Paul Laurence Dunbar and his contemporaries, emphasizing their struggle against prevalent stereotypes that stemmed from minstrelsy, popular song, and southern white writing. His look at the twentieth-century Black Renaissance explores the works, themes, concerns, and experiences of poets Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Sterling Brown, and Langston Hughes. 

Deeply sensitive and remarkably comprehensive Black Poets of the United States combines encyclopedic knowledge with a broad perspective to provide a pioneering examination of major African American poets and their works.